Most Americans still appear to be operating under the delusion that the "recession" will soon pass and that things will get back to "normal" very soon.  Unfortunately, that is not anywhere close to the truth.  What we are now witnessing are the early stages of the complete and total breakdown of the U.S. economic system.  The U.S. government, state governments, local governments, businesses and American consumers have collectively piled up debt that is equivalent to approximately 360 percent of GDP.  At no point during the Great Depression (or at any other time during our history) did we ever come close to such a figure.  We have piled up the biggest mountain of debt that the world has ever seen, and now that gigantic debt bubble is beginning to pop.  As this house of cards comes crashing down, the economic pain is going to become almost unimaginable. 

Already, things are really, really, really bad out there.  Unemployment is at shockingly high levels.  Foreclosures and personal bankruptcies continue to set new all-time records.  Businesses are being shut down at a staggering rate, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. government continues to pile up debt at blinding speed.

There is no use sugar-coating it.

The U.S. economy is collapsing.

The following are 40 bizarre statistics that reveal the truth about the collapse of the U.S. economy....

1 - According to one shocking new survey, 28% of U.S. households have at least one member that is looking for a full-time job.

2 - A recent Pew Research survey found that 55 percent of the U.S. labor force has experienced either unemployment, a pay decrease, a reduction in hours or an involuntary move to part-time work since the recession began.

3 - There are 9.2 million Americans that are unemployed but that are not receiving an unemployment insurance check.

4 - In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.

5 - According to one analysis, the United States has lost 10.5 million jobs since 2007.

6 - China's trade surplus (much of it with the United States) climbed 140 percent in June compared to a year earlier.

7 - This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.

8 - According to a poll taken in 2009, 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck.  That was up significantly from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.

9 - According to a recent poll conducted by Bloomberg, 71% of Americans say that it still feels like the economy is in a recession.

10 - Banks repossessed 269,962 U.S. homes during the second quarter of 2010, which was a new all-time record.

11 - Banks repossessed an average of 4,000 South Florida properties a month in the first half of 2010, up 83 percent from the first half of 2009.

12 - According to RealtyTrac, a total of 1.65 million U.S. properties received foreclosure filings during the first half of 2010.

13 - The Mortgage Bankers Association recently announced that demand for loans to purchase U.S. homes has sunk to a 13-year low.

14 - Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.

15 - 1.41 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009 - a 32 percent increase over 2008.

16 - Back in 1950 each retiree's Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 workers.  Today, each retiree's Social Security benefit is paid for by approximately 3.3 workers.  By 2025 it is projected that there will be approximately two workers for each retiree.

17 - According to a new poll, six of 10 non-retirees believe that Social Security won't be able to pay them benefits when they stop working.

18 - 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved for retirement.

19 - According to one survey, 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.

20 - According to one recent survey, 24% of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.

21 - The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index declined sharply to 52.9 in June.  Most economists had expected that the figure for June would be somewhere around 62.

22 - Retail sales in the U.S. fell in June for a second month in a row.

23 - Vacancies and lease rates at U.S. shopping centers continued to get worse during the second quarter of 2010.

24 - Consumer credit in the United States has contracted during 15 of the past 16 months.

25 - During the first quarter of 2010, the total number of loans that are at least three months past due in the United States increased for the 16th consecutive quarter.

26 - Things are now so bad in California that in the region around the state capital, Sacramento, there is now one closed business for every six that are still open.

27 - The state of Illinois now ranks eighth in the world in possible bond-holder default.  The state of California is ninth.

28 - More than 25 percent of Americans now have a credit score below 599, which means that they are a very bad credit risk.

29 - On Friday, U.S. regulators closed down three banks in Florida, two in South Carolina and one in Michigan, bringing to 96 the number of U.S. banks to be shut down so far in 2010.

30 - The FDIC's deposit insurance fund now has negative 20.7 billion dollars in it, which represents a slight improvement from the end of 2009.

31 - The U.S. federal budget deficit has topped $1 trillion with three months still to go in the current budget year.

32 - According to a U.S. Treasury Department report to Congress, the U.S. national debt will top $13.6 trillion this year and climb to an estimated $19.6 trillion by 2015.

33 - The M3 money supply plunged at a 9.6 percent annual rate during the first quarter of 2010.

34 - According to a new poll of Americans between the ages of 44 and 75, 61% said that running out money was their biggest fear. The remaining 39% thought death was scarier.

35 - One study found that as of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.

36 - The bottom 40 percent of all income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.

37 - The number of Americans with incomes below the official poverty line rose by about 15% between 2000 and 2006, and by 2008 over 30 million U.S. workers were earning less than $10 per hour.

38 - According to one recent study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.

39 - For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.

40 - A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey has found that just 23% of American voters nationwide believe the federal government today has the consent of the governed.

America's national debt is exploding out of control, and still most politicians in Washington D.C. don't really seem that interested in doing anything about it.  Why?  Well, the truth is that if the U.S. government reduces government spending that will slow down the economy, and if the economy slows down then Americans will blame the politicians, and if Americans are angry at the politicians then they will be less likely to vote them back into office.  So we actually have a system where our politicians have an incentive not to do anything about the national debt.  Meanwhile, the exploding debt continues to become a colossal long-term problem that threatens to destroy not only our economy, but our entire way of life.  The federal budget deficit has topped $1 trillion with three months still to go in the current budget year.  It is projected that the final budget deficit for 2010 will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.3 to 1.5 trillion dollars.  But can we really afford to keep having deficits that are over a trillion dollars every single year?

No, we can't.

In fact, Democrat Erskine Bowles, one of the heads of Barack Obama's national debt commission, recently told the National Governors Association that the U.S. national debt "is like a cancer".

How much of a cancer?

Well, according to Bowles, if the U.S. government does not make any changes it will be spending $2 trillion just for interest on the national debt by 2020.

2 trillion dollars.

The entire U.S. government will only spend somewhere between 3 and 4 trillion dollars in all of 2010.

Yes, that is how desperate the situation is becoming.

If something is not done about this horrific debt it is going to swallow our nation alive financially.

The following are 11 facts about America's national debt in 2010 that should alarm us all....

*On June 1st, the U.S. National Debt was $13,050,826,460,886.

*From the founding of the United States until Ronald Reagan took office we accumulated a total of about 1 trillion dollars in debt.  Now the U.S. national debt is over 13 trillion dollars.

*It is projected that the U.S. government will issue nearly as much new debt in 2010 as the rest of the governments of the world combined.

*If right this moment you went out and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.  But somehow the U.S. government has accumulated a debt that is over 13 trillion dollars.

*If you do the math, the truth is that it is simply not possible to pay off the U.S. national debt.  In fact, if you took every single dollar out of every single bank and out of every single wallet there wouldn't be anywhere close to enough money to do it.

*According to an official U.S. government report, rapidly growing interest costs on the U.S. national debt together with spending on major entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare will absorb approximately 92 cents of every dollar of federal revenue by the year 2019.  That is before one penny is spent on anything else.

*Back in 1950, each retiree's Social Security benefit was paid for by approximately 16 workers.  Today, each retiree's Social Security benefit is paid for by approximately 3.3 workers.  By 2025 it is projected that there will be approximately two workers for each retiree.

*According to the Congressional Budget Office, in 2010 the Social Security system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes.  That was not supposed to happen until at least 2016.

*Over 40 million Americans are now on food stamps and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is projecting that more than 43 million Americans will be on food stamps by the end of 2011.

*Approximately 57 percent of Barack Obama's 3.8 trillion dollar budget for 2011 consists of direct payments to individual Americans or is money that is spent on their behalf.

*A trillion $10 bills, if they were taped end to end, would wrap around the globe more than 380 times.  That amount of money would still not be enough to pay off the U.S. national debt.

Please send this out to everyone that you can, and if you have an opinion about all this debt please feel free to leave a comment below....

Well, it is official.  40.2 million Americans received food stamps in March, which represented a 21 percent increase from a year earlier.  That means that more than one out of every eight Americans is now dependent on the federal government for their daily bread.  But the truth is that things are going to get even worse.  The U.S. Department of Agriculture is projecting that more than 43 million Americans will be on food stamps by the end of 2011. 

Ouch!

40 million Americans on food stamps?

The old timers used to tell us that one day we would all be standing in bread lines, but this is ridiculous.

The United States is rapidly becoming a socialized welfare state and nobody seems to be able to do anything to stop it.

You see, it is not only the food stamp program that is exploding.

Virtually all government handout programs are exploding.

For example, nearly 51 million Americans received $672 billion in Social Security benefits in 2009.

It seems like almost everyone is getting money from the government these days.

But of course all of these government handouts are also creating a huge problem.

It is called debt.

According to the U.S. Treasury Department, on June 1st the U.S. National Debt was $13,050,826,460,886.97.

We have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world and there is no possible way that we are ever going to be able to pay it off.

In fact, this crushing debt load will almost certainly destroy the U.S. economy.

But the tens of millions of Americans that are getting handouts from the government each month do not want to give them up.

In fact, it is those handouts that are keeping many of them off the streets.

Millions of Americans are finding it really hard to make it these days - especially the millions of Americans that don't have jobs.

Long-term unemployment has never been this bad in the United States in the post-World War II era.

In fact, 45.9% of those currently unemployed in the United States have been out of work longer than six months.  That is the highest percentage since the Labor Department began keeping track in 1948.

And the truth is that there are fewer and fewer good jobs out there.

You see, we shipped millions and millions of good jobs to other countries after our politicians promised us that "free trade" and "globalism" would be so good for us.

Well, they were good for the greedy CEOs that raked in record profits by exploiting third world labor pools, but they were not so good for the millions of Americans that have now lost their jobs.

Increasingly, the U.S. is becoming a "two tier" society.

The very rich are thriving while tens of millions of other Americans have never had it harder.

So where will all of this end?

50 million Americans on food stamps?

60 million Americans on food stamps?

Will we all be on food stamps someday?

This is getting ridiculous and it has to stop.

The U.S. is on the path to economic and financial oblivion.

But the politicians in Washington D.C. seem content to continue business as usual.

As long as they keep getting elected they really don't seem to care much about what they are doing to the long-term future of this nation.

But of course ultimately it is our responsibility for electing such a bunch of absolute losers to represent us.

The truth is that the United States of America is falling apart and Obama, Pelosi and Reid are completely incapable of fixing things.

Not that the Republicans did much better when they controlled Congress and the White House.

The truth is that both parties are filled with corrupt career politicians that shouldn't be hired to run a Burger King much less make decisions for this entire nation.

But this is where we are at.  We have come to a time of great national crisis and the leadership in Washington D.C. is pretty much completely incompetent.

So is there a way out of this mess?  Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion....

The following is a piece entitled "I'm 63 and I'm Tired" by Robert A. Hall that has been floating around the Internet. It was recently forwarded to us in an email, and we thought that it expressed the emotions that so many Americans are feeling right now that we should post it here.

If you are touched by Mr. Hall's letter, please send it out to as many of your friends and family as you can....

I'm 63. Except for one semester in college when jobs were scarce and a six-month period when I was between jobs, but job-hunting every day, I've worked, hard, since I was 18. Despite some health challenges, I still put in 50-hour weeks, and haven't called in sick in seven or eight years. I make a good salary, but I didn't inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, there's no retirement in sight, and I'm tired. Very tired.

I'm tired of being told that I have to "spread the wealth" to people who don't have my work ethic. I'm tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy to earn it.

I'm tired of being told that I have to pay more taxes to "keep people in their homes." Sure, if they lost their jobs or got sick, I'm willing to help. But if they bought McMansions at three times the price of our paid-off, $250,000 condo, on one-third of my salary, then let the left-wing Congress-critters who passed Fannie and Freddie and the Community Reinvestment Act that created the bubble help them with their own money.

I'm tired of being told how bad America is by left-wing millionaires like Michael Moore, George Soros and Hollywood Entertainers who live in luxury because of the opportunities America offers. In thirty years, if they get their way, the United States will have the economy of Zimbabwe , the freedom of the press of China , the crime and violence of Mexico , the tolerance for Christian people of Iran , and the freedom of speech of Venezuela .

I'm tired of being told that Islam is a "Religion of Peace," when every day I can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives and daughters for their family "honor"; of Muslims rioting over some slight offense; of Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they aren't "believers"; of Muslims burning schools for girls; of Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for "adultery"; of Muslims mutilating the genitals of little girls; all in the name of Allah, because the Qur'an and Shari'a law tells them to.

I'm tired of being told that "race doesn't matter" in the post-racial world of Obama, when it's all that matters in affirmative action jobs, lower college admission and graduation standards for minorities (harming them the most), government contract set-asides, tolerance for the ghetto culture of violence and fatherless children that hurts minorities more than anyone, and in the appointment of U . S . Senators from Illinois.

I think it's very cool that we have a black president and that a black child is doing her homework at the desk where Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. I just wish the black president was Condi Rice, or someone who believes more in freedom and the individual and less arrogantly of an all-knowing government.

I'm tired of a news media that thinks Bush's fundraising and inaugural expenses were obscene, but that think Obama's, at triple the cost, were wonderful; that thinks Bush exercising daily was a waste of presidential time, but Obama exercising is a great example for the public to control weight and stress; that picked over every line of Bush's military records, but never demanded that Kerry release his; that slammed Palin, with two years as governor, for being too inexperienced for VP, but touted Obama with three years as senator as potentially the best president ever. Wonder why people are dropping their subscriptions or switching to Fox News? Get a clue. I didn't vote for Bush in 2000, but the media and Kerry drove me to his camp in 2004.

I'm tired of being told that out of "tolerance for other cultures" we must let Saudi Arabia use our oil money to fund mosques and madrassa Islamic schools to preach hate in America , while no American group is allowed to fund a church, synagogue or religious school in Saudi Arabia to teach love and tolerance.

I'm tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global warming, which no one is allowed to debate. My wife and I live in a two-bedroom apartment and carpool together five miles to our jobs. We also own a three-bedroom condo where our daughter and granddaughter live. Our carbon footprint is about 5% of Al Gore's, and if you're greener than Gore, you're green enough.

I'm tired of being told that drug addicts have a disease, and I must help support and treat them, and pay for the damage they do. Did a giant germ rush out of a dark alley, grab them, and stuff white powder up their noses while they tried to fight it off? I don't think Gay people choose to be Gay, but I damn sure think druggies chose to take drugs. And I'm tired of harassment from cool people treating me like a freak when I tell them I never tried marijuana.

I'm tired of illegal aliens being called "undocumented workers," especially the ones who aren't working, but are living on welfare or crime. What's next? Calling drug dealers, "Undocumented Pharmacists"? And, no, I'm not against Hispanics. Most of them are Catholic, and it's been a few hundred years since Catholics wanted to kill me for my religion. I'm willing to fast track for citizenship any Hispanic person, who can speak English, doesn't have a criminal record and who is self-supporting without family on welfare, or who serves honorably for three years in our military.... Those are the citizens we need.

I'm tired of latte liberals and journalists, who would never wear the uniform of the Republic themselves, or let their entitlement-handicapped kids near a recruiting station, trashing our military. They and their kids can sit at home, never having to make split-second decisions under life and death circumstances, and bad mouth better people than themselves. Do bad things happen in war? You bet. Do our troops sometimes misbehave? Sure. Does this compare with the atrocities that were the policy of our enemies for the last fifty years and still are? Not even close. So here's the deal. I'll let myself be subjected to all the humiliation and abuse that was heaped on terrorists at Abu Ghraib or Gitmo, and the critics can let themselves be subject to captivity by the Muslims, who tortured and beheaded Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, or the Muslims who tortured and murdered Marine Lt. Col. William Higgins in Lebanon, or the Muslims who ran the blood-spattered Al Qaeda torture rooms our troops found in Iraq, or the Muslims who cut off the heads of schoolgirls in Indonesia, because the girls were Christian. Then we'll compare notes. British and American soldiers are the only troops in history that civilians came to for help and handouts, instead of hiding from in fear.

I'm tired of people telling me that their party has a corner on virtue and the other party has a corner on corruption. Read the papers; bums are bipartisan. And I'm tired of people telling me we need bipartisanship. I live in Illinois , where the "Illinois Combine" of Democrats has worked to loot the public for years. Not to mention the tax cheats in Obama's cabinet.

I'm tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers and politicians of both parties talking about innocent mistakes, stupid mistakes or youthful mistakes, when we all know they think their only mistake was getting caught. I'm tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or poor.

Speaking of poor, I'm tired of hearing people with air-conditioned homes, color TVs and two cars called poor. The majority of Americans didn't have that in 1970, but we didn't know we were "poor." The poverty pimps have to keep changing the definition of poor to keep the dollars flowing.

I'm real tired of people who don't take responsibility for their lives and actions. I'm tired of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination or big-whatever for their problems.

Yes, I'm damn tired . But I'm also glad to be 63. Because, mostly, I'm not going to have to see the world these people are making. I'm just sorry for my granddaughter.

Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam veteran who served five terms in the Massachusetts State Senate.

Most Americans believe that the U.S. economy will fully recover from this recent recession and will soon become stronger than ever.  But that is definitely not what is happening.  The truth is that the very foundations of the U.S. economy are coming apart and we are headed for a massive amount of financial trouble as a nation.  Collectively, the U.S. government, U.S. businesses and U.S. consumers have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world.  This mountain of debt has enabled us to enjoy a spectacular standard of living for the past several decades, but now the bills are coming due and nobody seems to even realize how great of a financial disaster the U.S. now finds itself in the middle of.

The following are 10 huge flashing danger signs that show just how much of a mess the U.S. economy is in....

#1) The FDIC is opening a satellite office in the Chicago area that will accommodate up to 500 temporary staffers and contractors to manage receiverships and liquidate assets from what they are expecting will be a massive wave of failed Midwest banks.

#2) The U.S. Treasury Department announced on Tuesday that foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury securities fell by $53 billion in December, which is the biggest one month decline in history.  China alone reduced its holdings of U.S. Treasuries by $34.2 billion.  So if foreigners quite buying up all of our debt, what happens then?

#3) Mortgage defaults in the U.S. have continued to hit record highs and housing prices are continuing to fall.  Now, a massive "second wave" of adjustable rate mortgages is scheduled to reset beginning in 2010.  The first wave of adjustable rate mortgage resets absolutely devastated the U.S. housing market in 2007 and 2008.  So what is this second wave of mortgage resets going to do to the U.S. economy?

#4) In fact, one new study estimates that five million houses and condominiums will go through foreclosure over the next few years.  Needless to say, that would be absolutely catastrophic.

#5) The number of Americans who are declaring bankruptcy continues to skyrocket.  1.41 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009 which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.

#6) But how can Americans pay their bills without jobs?  In some areas of the United States it is now nearly impossible to get a really good job unless you have an inside connection.  In fact, the mayor of Detroit estimates that the real unemployment rate in his city is approximately 45 to 50 percent. 

#7) America needs jobs, but soaring unemployment insurance taxes are discouraging small and mid-size companies from bringing on more workers.  According to the National Association of State Workforce Agencies, companies in at least 35 states will have to fork over even more in unemployment insurance taxes in 2010.  Making it more costly to hire a new worker is not going to help put Americans back to work. 

#8) The U.S. economy is facing a pension crisis of unprecedented magnitude.  The truth is that the vast majority of all pension funds in the United States, both public and private, are extremely underfunded.  With millions upon millions of Baby Boomers now at retirement age, there is simply no way that all of these unfunded pension obligations can be met.  Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Chicago and Joshua D. Rauh of Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management recently calculated the collective unfunded pension liability for all 50 U.S. states for Forbes magazine.  So what was the total that they came up with?  3.2 trillion dollars.

#9) Not only that, but the Social Security system is also a silent monster that threatens to devastate U.S. government finances.  In fact, many analysts are now forecasting that the coming wave of Baby Boomers is going to bankrupt the entire Social Security system.

#10) All of these economic problems come at a time when the U.S. national debt is exploding into the stratosphere.  The national debt is now over 12 trillion dollars and it is rising at a rate of about 3.8 billion dollars per day.  So how much is one trillion dollars?  Well, if you spent one dollar every single second of every single day, it would take you over 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.  That is a lot of money.

The truth is that the U.S. is drowning in debt.  American consumers are broke.  American businesses are broke.  State governments are broke.  The U.S. federal government is broke.  The only way that we can keep things going is to borrow increasingly larger amounts of money.

But when we do borrow even more money we make our long-term problems even worse.

The day of reckoning for the U.S. economy is fast approaching and we are headed for some extremely difficult economic times.

Are you ready?